


boughs and branches

by NekoAisu



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: ((or as i like to call it: tree husbandry)), ((see notes)), ((very minor and pertains to turning into a plant)), Alternate Universe - No War, Arbory, Bittersweet, Body Horror, Chronic Pain, Fluff and Angst, Hanahaki Disease, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love, Transformation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-12 14:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17469032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/NekoAisu
Summary: Prompto Argentum is a man of many talents. He's skilled with a camera same as he is a wrench, but none of his myriad skills prepared him the dangers of growing feelings for someone so obviously unattainable. He plans to swallow down the blossoming love and leave it to suffocate within his ribcage.But it comes sprouting forth and he's left with petals on his tongue instead of a confession.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't sure how to tag the whole "hey I hecked up regular hanahaki so now people turn into plants but they're not technically dead" thing so... fair warning? I have no idea if this will squick anyone so I'd urge you to proceed with caution.

Prompto Argentum is not a botanist. The most experience he’s had in growing plants to date came in the form of his sixth grade science fair project on hydroponics he’d managed an A on by sheer force of will and parental intervention. His job, however, is set on hammering new skills into him at every turn. He stopped having trouble telling a pruning knife from a paring knife two months into his new life surrounded by insatiable green. He thinks Mariella is happy about that, if her heavy-scented blossoms are anything to go by. 

Auxesia Conservatory was shorthanded when he’d been applied, some newbie whose greenthumb would have to be painted on to make up for his lack of training.. Prompto isn’t sure if he’ll be able to change jobs after this, a whole eight years of his life sunk into the care and keeping of his own found family. He can’t find much in him to complain.

Plot forty seven isn’t one of the largest, but it’s packed full of vibrant color and even more stunning people. Mariella is one of the newer additions, a woman whose lover left her once her health began to fail. She’d never given up on him and blossomed in creamy velveteen petals every summer. She’d been common born, but embalmed in wood she did not look unlike a dryad. Prompto makes sure she’s bursting with life to make up for the one she’d left behind. 

Mariella sits clustered with many of the other flowering varieties Prompto tends to, Althea an outlier as his singular evergreen. (The elderly pine’s name is a joke between those who tend to him, remnants of a tattoo coloring his bark unevenly. Prompto can vaguely make out the shape of feathers, but nothing else is clear enough to decipher)

It’s a lazy Wednesday. They get deliveries on Friday, fertilize new plots on Sunday, and transplanting is left to the conservatory’s elite team. All other tasks are things each arborist is left to handle on their own schedule. As it is, Prompto’s plot is weed-free and pleasantly warm where the sun dapples the ground. The mild Insomnian summer giving way for the slow slide of autumn’s colors is something Prompto dreads and loves all at once. 

During spring, he’s busy enough it’s a wonder he doesn’t have a temp hire to help wrangle the explosive growth of Delia’s shoots. Prompto wishes he’d managed to meet her before this, her fierce determination giving way to the wiles of her new firebush body. She grows at lightning speed and flowers in brilliant hues from spring until fall, but then she’s quiet. 

Everyone is quiet. 

Winter is lonely. He doesn’t have to come in every day, sometimes he can even skip a week at a time, but the freezing tile of his apartment is too hard after so many hours spent working with the forgiving velvet of fresh earth underfoot. He has some air plants hung up throughout his one-room rental, but winter hits him just as hard as his trees and he can’t muster much energy to care for anything more involved.

It’s a blessing to be able to lay back on the grass and rest his legs after spending a good few hours pulling weeds and planting some wildflowers. His knees ache same as the soles of his feet, but nothing can detract from how serene an environment he’s helped to create. 

Althea’s roots have grown strangely, knots arranged like imitation arms where they form a slight bowl. During summer rains, water collects enough they sometimes end up with tadpoles. Prompto asks, “What do you think of some mahonias? They bloom during winter. Might prove good company, y’know?”

“Sounds nice,” someone says and Prompto startles, sitting up so fast he smacks his forehead squarely into his right kneecap. 

He groans, hands pressing to his head. “Would it kill you to warn a guy?” 

The mystery intruder laughs and the grass crunches a few times as they walk closer. Prompto opens his eyes and sees a calloused hand. He takes it the same time he really  _ looks  _ at the person helping him up and  _ by the Great Lady Shiva he’s hot.  _

Oh no. 

_ Hell  _ no. 

Prompto is in no way clueless. He knows his type sure as he knows his own heartbeat. This mystery person is  _ handsome─ _ black hair disheveled but charmingly so a direct compliment to his eyes (by the  _ Astrals,  _ eyes that soulful should be outlawed)─and Prompto is no idiot. 

He tells himself that when he chirps a nervous, “Oh. Thank you.”

He repeats it like a mantra when mystery man smiles, right corner drawing up a little further than the left, and replies, “Sorry about that.” 

Prompto feels it’s blasphemous for someone who looks like, well,  _ that  _ to apologize. He keeps his mouth shut and smiles back instead. 

There’s a book in the man’s other hand, stamped leather distracting enough Prompto forgets he’s supposed to direct visitors to the main hall if they wander over to his plot. His charges are all the last of their lines, situated off the main path and wedged into a corner between a refurbished greenhouse and the outer, empty plots. They aren’t supposed to get visitors. 

A breeze picks up and rustles leaves and clothing alike. Althea seems to stretch forward toward the visitor. Prompto blurts, “You aren’t supposed to be here.” He stops, already knowing that  _ definitely  _ could have come out better, and tries again. “I mean, visitors need to stay within the main grounds. If you’re lost, it’s a five minute walk to the main path and straight left from there to the main hall.”

Mystery man frowns and it’s not the slightest bit intimidating when he sneezes half a second later. 

“Bless you.”

“Thanks and I’m not, uh, a visitor?”

Prompto raises one (painstakingly) manicured brow. “You don’t sound so sure about that, buddy. C’mon, I’ll walk you.”

Auxesia has a uniform, but it’s loosely followed at best. Most of it is just to ensure employees stay safe and don’t end up injured on the job. Prompto hasn’t stuck to it since the sixth month mark of his first year. The one thing they enforce is how everyone wears a nametag (pinned to the left side over the heart, arborists marked with furling boughs along the borders of the plastic rectangle to distinguish them from the entry level part timers). His mystery man doesn’t have a scrap of visible identification on him. Prompto tries to get some sort of information out of him to at least avoid the walk back being awkwardly silent.

“I’m Prompto,” he informs with a wink. “We gotta start walking back to get you a visitor’s pass if you want to stay on the grounds, but I’m not sure I’m comfortable taking a stroll with some unnamed trespasser.” It’s an obvious joke, but Mystery Man’s ears tinge pink at the tips all the same.

“It’s Noct.”

“Noc-t,” Prompto repeats, breaking it down with a grin. “I like it.”

Mystery ma─Noct chokes on his breath and Prompto desperately hopes it’s not because he’s somehow made him angry. His fears are assuaged when Noct smiles at him in that lopsided way of his. It’s already too familiar, making a home in the space behind his eyelids to flash blindingly whenever Prompto blinks. 

They talk as they walk, grass giving way to a loosely paved gravel path in no time at all. It feels like one moment they’re still near to Prompto’s carefully cultivated haven and the next Noct is waving goodbye. Prompto grimaces, rubbing out a sharp ache that blossoms outward from his sternum when Noct is out of sight. 

It’s not uncommon for those who work in facilities like Auxesia to catch what their charges have succumbed to. If anything, it’s nearly more common than not for them to develop Hanahaki in some shape or form by the time they reach their fifth year mark. Prompto knows that Serae from plot twenty two braids his hair together with the vines that have begun to grow along his scalp and has been wheezing around roots for the better part of six months already. Selena planted herself by a huge Galahdian plumeria two years past and came up a shower of dahlias. 

Prompto knows he falls in love too easily to get out unscathed.

He spends three hours talking to Mariella about Noct, breaking off into tangents every other sentence because the ten minutes they’d spent together were just enough to know too many miscellaneous facts about a man he’d most likely never see again. He has to stop by the sundown, pain lancing from his heart out along the curve of his ribs forcing him to take slow, shallow breaths. He hopes it’s just a strained muscle, or the beginnings of a cold. 

He tries to forget about Noct. 

It doesn’t work. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmu on:  
> twitter | FlamingAceKiri  
> discord | NekoAisu#7099


	2. Chapter 2

Saturday dawns with the crack of tired joints and a chain of coughs into his palms.

Prompto looks forward to running through Insomnia’s inner-city parks (to how the rising sun soaks into his skin like syrup and his lungs burn same as his legs), but there’s a tickle in his throat that won’t leave no matter how many vitamin tablets he sucks on. There’s a tiredness that’s taken to sinking into his bones overnight as of late. When he swings his feet out from under the comforter, he shivers. Standing up fills him with a sensation not unlike rightness. The tile feels too hard beneath him, but when he stretches upward, arms extended while he breathes deeply, he can ignore it.

A glance at his phone reminds him of the time─six o’ clock sharp as per usual─and he speeds through his usual morning routine with the need to get out and breathe fresh air. The quote he’d set as his lock screen reminds him to focus on work (and, by extension, not whatever Shiva-kissed realm Noct had tumbled out of).

_“There is no sweeter smell than a flower brought to bloom by thine own hand.”_

Prompto coughs, popping yet another tablet into his mouth, and considers changing it to something less plant-related.

(He can’t. Not with how his mother had said it like it was the only gospel she’d ever partake in.)

He unplugs his phone from its charger and tosses it onto his bed instead, pulling out a pair of comfortable running shorts and a sport T-shirt just to toss them in the vague direction of his pillow as well. Changing takes all of three minutes, hunting for his missing left shoe taking up another five, and he’s out the door with his keys making a racket in his pocket just as his the hours hits halfway.

Early morning Insomnia isn’t particularly quiet. It takes time for it to reach maximum volume, sure, but Prompto can already hear the beeps of commuters on their way to work filling up the main streets. There’s the familiar opening and closing of doors while he heads down the stairs from his apartment and his downstairs neighbor calls, “Good morning, Prompto!”

“G’morning, Auntie Alicia! Don’t forget to take your supplements after breakfast!” He waves and vaults over the railing separating the third floor stairwell from the main walkway the same way he does every weekend. Alicia smiles fondly after him from the doorway of her apartment, cane in hand.

“Hard worker, that boy,” she comments to no one in particular. “It’s a shame he’s only cultivating other people’s love.” She shakes her head, ears green at the tips and skin run through with wood grain, and waits for the sun to rise.

Prompto tries not to think about how breathtaking Noct would look in early morning light where it spills over the tops of the Wall. He shakes himself out of it with every slap of his running shoes against the pavement.

He stops for breakfast at a little hole-in-the-wall cafeteria in the refugee district on his way back to his apartment, laughing when the owner foists some pastelitos on him “as congratulations on your new friend” when he gushes to her about Noct. Crowe pokes fun at him while her mother finishes stuffing a paper bag full of too many of the (delightfully unhealthy) pastries.

“So… Noct. Explain.”

Prompto fumbles for words, “He’s, uh, cute? Not your type─”

“Hell yeah he ain’t.”

“─but still really handsome. I think he was lost.”

Crowe stares at him, an eyebrow raised from behind a wild bunch of loose braids. “Lemme get this straight, a black haired beauty somehow sneaks into your workplace. You talk for, what? All of two─”

“Ten!”

“─minutes and you somehow manage to fall in love with him. Gods, Prom, it’s a wonder we haven’t lost you to the trees yet,” she jibes, snagging a small plastic bowl full of flan and a disposable plastic spoon. She pops the lid off and scoops a good third of the custard into her mouth in one go, nailing Prompto with the most unimpressed of all her looks. “Seriously, kid. I’ll tell you to give up now and save yourself the inevitable hospital visits.”

Prompto smiles, but it’s strained. “I’m trying.”

Mamá Altius hands him the bag of pastelitos with a soft smile. “Any boy would be lucky to have you, dear.” She leans in and places a kiss on his cheek, patting him on the back comfortingly.

“Thank you, Auntie,” he replies, beaming. “I’ll be back in a day or two, depending on how well a new addition takes root.”

Crowe purposely avoids any further comment.

Prompto jogs back toward home, cutting through Crepera Road in hopes he might spot the elusive discount posters in the windows of his favorite camera shop. No dice. He turns a corner and continues on home.

He sits out on the stairwell of his apartment building’s topmost floor, feet swinging through the air as crumbs are swept away by the wind and his thumb in equal measure. He manages a text with sticky fingers, glaze from the pastelitos smudging his screen, and asks his manager about availability for an annual workup.

It’s a requirement to get one done at least every twelve months. Auxesia Conservatory in and of itself is a research facility dedicated to the care and keeping of Hanahaki victims─and as such, their employees are required to ensure they aren’t carriers.

Prompto thinks of how Alicia needs to take root soon and loses his appetite halfway through a bite. She’s been changing since Prompto moved into the complex, her strain a much slower sort than most of those planted in Auxesia, and Prompto already grieves for the inevitable loss. It’s not going to be too much longer before she slows down and settles into place like a sculpture.

Prompto thinks of Althea, forgotten and lonely even while reaching for someone to hold and protect. He doesn’t want that fate for others. He’d gladly take it from any others and lock himself into Eos’s soil thousands upon millions of times over to save them from the same fate if he could. Crowe said he’d be an idiot to do so under any circumstances.

He rolls up the top of the paper bag and leans on the rusting metal of the stairway railing. He stays there until his phone chimes and the sun is high overhead, eyes closed and mind settling into something near a sleep state. A breeze brushes a kiss to his forehead where it ruffles his hair and continues on its way.

When he rises to go back inside, his screen reads _01:43._ He sighs.

The checks the response to his text.

 

 _Jupiter_ **_at 01:05 p.m._ **

Heya Prompto! We have an open appointment with Solis on Tuesday before visiting hours if you want it. Let me know asap and I can schedule it for you :) 

 _You_ **_at 01:45 p.m._ **

That would be awesome! Thanks a bunch!

 

He forgets about it until Celestae comes by his plot on Monday with a tub of liquid fertilizer and all too easy conversation. By the time they’re finished distributing the (diluted) food among the inhabitants of Prompto’s plot, they’re both more than ready to sit down for a while. Celestae collapses onto the grass and stares at Althea’s needles like they’re somehow going to spell out whatever answers either of them seek.

“Hey, Prompto?”

“Yeah?”

“I had my check-up this morning,” Celestae starts, faltering and pulling up grass instead of continuing whatever they meant to say.

Prompto glances over from where he’s clipping diseased clusters of leaves from Mariella’s many branches and asks, carefully calm, “You alright?”

They laugh, but it’s cut off by a wheeze. “Yeah. Just fine. Don’t worry about it.”

He does worry. He doesn’t sleep that night, going through the motions of his physical nearly on autopilot.

He feels faint when they have him drink the usual preventative, nausea stewing bright and unignorable from his stomach up his throat.

He throws up into a disposable plastic bag, bits of root fiber and breakfast making him heave for what feels like hours more from smell alone. Doctor Solis frowns and asks him if he’s alright with them ordering a couple more panels from the lab. He agrees and it feels like a punch to the gut for the rest of the day.

He picks up a bottle full of pills from the closest pharmacy on his way back from work and takes double the recommended dose. He glares at the label, wishing it said something nicer than “HanaHealer: Immediate Relief for the Chronically Unloved.” It reminds him how ridiculous of a situation he’s bundled himself into.

The next afternoon finds him face to face with the reason for his newfound problem.

“Noct?”

The man rubs a hand through the back of his hair (soft and unstyled, unlike how it had been in their initial meeting) and smiles sheepishly. “Hey.”

“You have a visitor’s pass, this time,” Prompto jokes. He brushes dirt off on his pants, loam sitting in piles around him from where he’d been checking depth for some new flowers he hopes Althea will enjoy.

Noct sputters, ears pink at the tips where his blush runs off his cheeks, and opens his mouth to say something. All that comes out is half a croak.

Prompto smiles, welcoming and patient. “It’s good to see you again,” he admits. “Sucks it has to be when I’m covered in dirt, but I’ll take it.”

“You’re, uh, fine. Just fine,” Noct spits like his filter can’t quite decide what it wants to let out. “It’s good to see you… too.”

“Oh, don’t be awkward with me, Noct,” Prompto says, eyes crinkling at the corners when he smiles, “and just c’mere. You have a lot more talking to do if you ever intend to finish filling me in on the new patch for JustMon Five, y’know!” He swallows around a burst of pain from his breastbone when Noctis grins at him. He breathes through it. Noct doesn’t notice.

By the time visiting hours are over, Prompto has managed to plant every single one of the poppy plants he’d brought with him and hack up exactly fourteen pieces of worryingly plant-like material into the nearest bathroom sink. He lays in bed, tired like he’s never been before, and stares at his phone screen.

He can’t manage to sleep.

 

 _Noct Gar_ **_at 09:01 p.m._ **

Hey prom! This is noct. Specs says i should wait a bit before texting but i wanted to say thanks for letting me bother you during work

 _You_ **_at 09:07 p.m._ **

It was my pleasure! Seriously, man

You’re welcome anytime <3

 _Noct Gar_ **_at 09:07 p.m._ **

Thanks dude. It was awesome to get to see you. Talk again soon?

 _You_ **_at 09:08 p.m._ **

Heck yeah!

Shoot me a text whenever you wanna drop by

I can let you know what my schedule is lookin like!

 

He drifts off with the memory of Noct’s laugh ringing pleasantly throughout his mind. He wakes to cold sheets and itchy skin.

Auxesia feels more and more like a haven as the days flow by. His labs come back positive and he gets prescribed some medications to slow the spread and ease his symptoms. He visits Celestae in their new plot and offers them some of the pastries Mamá Altius sent him with. They smile at him, vibrant with ranunculus petals for hair where dormant buds have begun blossoming in shocks of purple and white, and refuse.

“I’m comfortable here, Prompto. It’s alright.”

He visits again every day for three weeks. By the fourth, they don’t respond to him. The seasons change. He ignores the slow slide of his body into that of another resident of the conservatory.

He has another appointment for a checkup. Solis orders a good handful of tests Prompto is relieved to know his insurance covers. They do X-rays, a CT scan, and so many other imaging procedures and tests Prompto is decently sure that the entirety of Insomnia Central Radiology knows him by the end of the week.

The results come back and he spends the weekend curled up in bed, picking leaves off his tongue and drifting in and out of fitful sleep where he can grab it. His ribcage feels too full and too empty all at once, what really _needs_ to be there to fill the ache of his heart long denied and instead covered by roots and an inexorable metamorphosis to something that maybe (just maybe) Noct can love.

He thinks back to what Crowe said─ _“Gods, Prom, it’s a wonder we haven’t lost you to the trees yet.”_ ─and takes a faltering breath. His sides cramp.

He hasn’t told anyone.

He doesn't know how. 

**Author's Note:**

> hmu at:  
> twitter | FlamingAceKiri  
> curiouscat | NekoAisu  
> discord | NekoAisu#7099
> 
> slam that kudos button if you enjoyed this and lemme know if there's anything i need to work on


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